Right-Size Your Content Marketing

Make sure the value of your content marketing outweighs the effort to produce it.

Goldilocks knew what she was talking about: There’s too big, too small and just right. Here’s how to right-size your content marketing to make your efforts as effective as possible.

Knowing When Enough Is Enough

I’ve often told the story of a colleague — a copywriter — who, years ago, had been sending out a quarterly email newsletter. This newsletter was incredibly productive for the copywriter, producing new business from old clients as well converting new prospects. Every time it landed in people’s inboxes, the inquiries flowed.

“Brilliant!” the copywriter thought. “I should send this monthly instead of quarterly.”

And, smart as you are, you know what happens next: crickets. The email newsletter’s effectiveness dropped precipitously, with new business now just trickling in.

Clearly, the copywriter’s clients and prospects didn’t really want or need to hear from her more often than they were. Of course, more may have been at play than just the change in frequency. We live in the very real, very chaotic world, so other factors may have contributed to the drop in effectiveness.

Testing Tells the Tale

She had no way of knowing this until she tried to improve on her already impressive results. And even though that test didn’t work out very well, testing is the first rule for finding the right size and shape for your content marketing efforts.

Even at the risk of negatively affecting your results, you have to experiment constantly and in as controlled a fashion as possible. Setting it and forgetting it isn’t likely to yield the dramatic drop-off our friend the copywriter saw. More likely, your marketing will slowly wither.

Data-Driven Decision Making

To avoid that, we need to pay attention to metrics and analytics. The copywriter realized her email was generating business; wondering how she could make it generate more is absolutely the right implies. I would encourage a bit more rigor and discipline in metrics gathering and evaluation, but encourage you to seek ongoing, incremental improvements.

That only happens when you are willing to be active in your risk-taking rather than passive. Because you’re mistaking if you think that choosing to stay the course isn’t a risk of its own.

Since 1996, Andrew Schulkind has asked clients one simple question: what does digital marketing success look like, and how can marketing progress be measured?

A veteran content marketer, web developer, and digital strategist, Andrew founded Andigo New Media to help firms encourage audience engagement through solid information architecture, a great user experience, and compelling content. A dash of common sense doesn’t hurt, either.

His work touches social media, search-engine optimization, and email marketing, among other components, and he has presented at Social Media Week NY and WordCampNYC, among other events. His writing appears in various online and print publications.

Andrew graduated with a B.A. in Philosophy from Bucknell University. He engages in a range of community volunteer work and is an avid fly fisherman and cyclist. He also loves collecting meaningless trivia. (Did you know the Lone Ranger made his mask from the cloth of his brother's vest after his brother was killed by "the bad guys?")